The world for Mary MacLane was one-half wonder,
one-half adventure. She found inspiration all around her, from
the great plateaus and mountains of her native Butte to the
rarified gentry of Newport in its robber-baron glory days. She
captured the fancy of millions in this country and abroad, was
elevated to near-mythic status in her own time, and was gossiped
about incessantly, imitated constantly, and condemned
mercilessly. She was hailed by some of the finest authors and
critics of her day as a literary genius, and was endlessly
celebrated (when she was not being reviled) by the lowest of
the yellow press. She was the prototype of today's media icons.
And yet this unique individual - pioneering free spirit, bon
vivant, gambler extraordinaire, newswoman, writer for and
star of the silent screen - has somehow remained out of print
and unavailable to readers in her own country for more than
seventy-five years.

She wrote her first book in 1901, at the age of
nineteen. It created a nationwide sensation when published a year
later, sold almost 100,000 copies in its first
month, and made her a rich woman. The Story of Mary
MacLane was like a flame suddenly springing up in the closed
tinderbox of those dry, stuffy Edwardian times. In an era in
which women, like children, were to be seen and not heard, Mary
MacLane gave her sex a voice. And what a voice it was.
With a frankness and sophistication far beyond her tender years,
she wrote openly of such diverse things as drugs, death, the
Devil (whom she blithely announced she wished to marry, should he
ever appear), truth, bisexuality, and beauty. Her writing rings
true today, and actually says more to us now than it did to her
own generation. As we approach the end of the Twentieth Century
in America, many of us have been forced to realize that the
traditional values and attitudes no longer hold true. The rules
no longer apply. And Mary was fighting to rewrite the entire
rulebook, in the hide-bound America of 1901 - fighting to live her life, and to write about it, on her own
terms.

While she was greatly misunderstood in her time, there can be no
doubt that she was a figure of major importance. The
Chicagoan eloquently eulogized "this errant daughter of
literature" upon her death in August 1929 as
"the first of the self-expressionists, and also the first of
the flappers. She represented the missing link between the shaved
bare leg of the present and the bashful ankle of the past. She
should be as important to any student of modern manners as the
Java ape-man is to an- thropologists. She throws the subject into
perspective, for she broke loose upon a startled world as far
back as 1902.

"How did it happen that a revolution in manners, a
transvaluation of values in the female code of behavior, started,
or seemed to start, with an unruly young woman who couldn't bear
the sight of the tooth-brushes hanging up in the family bathroom
at Butte, Montana? What seed fell upon that austere provincial
soil to produce this amorous diarist with a narcissus complex?
What mystic or glandular voices spoke to Mary, bidding her go
forth into the world as the Jeanne d'Arc of the Warm Mammas?

"The New Woman has had many famous prophets, from Susan B.
Anthony to Henrik Ibsen, but the origin of her wild young sister,
the New Female, has not yet been carefully traced. The career of
Mary MacLane is Chapter I in The History of Flapperism,
ready-made for any ambitious sociologist. This is a work that is
crying to be written - yea, crying out loud."

But The History of Flapperism was never to be written, and
Mary MacLane was gradually forgotten. For a scant two months
after she died, so too died the decade she helped create: the
Roaring Twenties, collapsing in on itself one awful October day
known forever after as Black Thursday. But no matter. Now, in
this book, after too many years in the shadows, Mary MacLane
lives again.

The present volume affords a broad overview of MacLane's most
productive years. Included are the complete text of her first book
(printed for the first time in its original, unexpurgated
form); a 1902 interview with the enigmatic writer;
seven of her colorful newspaper feature articles (two of them
written, in the first flush of her success, for Joseph Pulitzer's
flagship Manhattan daily, the rest in 1910, when
MacLane had returned to Montana after seven years of East Coast
lionizing); notes; and a detailed bibliography.

I am indebted to many people and institutions for their kind
assistance. To Carole Bell, Rosemary C. Hanes, and Pat Rigsby of
the Library of Congress; Francena Brumbaugh of Stanford
University; Harry Clancy; Ellen Crain of the Butte-Silver Bow
Public Archives; Ann Deromedi and JoAnn Myers of the Thermopolis
(Wyoming) Public Library; Anne Drew and John Hughes of the
Butte-Silver Bow Public Library; Martha Finnerty; Jacqueline
Fretwell of the St Augustine (Florida) Historical Society; the
George Washington University Library; Bob Hemmingson of the
Fergus Falls (Minnesota) Public Library; Willis Kim of the
University of California at Berkeley Library; Margaret Kulis of
the Newberry Library; Paula Lee and Richard Popp of the
University of Chicago Library; Phil Lipson; Ronald S. Magliozzi
of the Museum of Modern Art; Carolyn J. Mattern; Ada McAllister;
the New York Public Library; the Otter Tail County
(Minnesota) Historical Society; Lucille Nichols Patrick; the
Rockland (Massachusetts) Public Library; Richard A. Schrader of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library; Dr Mary
Smith; Bruce Stuppi; Dr Virginia Terris; Tracy Thornton of the
Montana Standard; the University of San Diego Library;
Dave Walter and Rebecca Kohl of the Montana Historical Society;
and Leslie Wheeler - my grateful thanks. And to Margery Wood
and Elizabeth Wood, my very special appreciation.